Home Health Patient-Driven Groupings Model

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has implemented two new ICD-10-CM diagnosis codes, effective April 1, 2020:

In response to the national emergency that was declared concerning the COVID-19 outbreak, NCHS is implementing a new diagnosis code, U07.1, COVID-19, into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) and;

In response to recent occurrences of vaping related disorders, the NCHS is implementing a new diagnosis code, U07.0, Vaping-related disorder, into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM), for reporting vaping-related disorders.

CMS finalized a new case-mix classification model, the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM), effective beginning January 1, 2020. The PDGM relies more heavily on clinical characteristics, and other patient information to place home health periods of care into meaningful payment categories. One case-mix variable is the assignment of the principal diagnosis to one of 12 clinical groups to explain the primary reason for home health services.

Both U07.1, COVID-19 and U07.0, Vaping-related disorder will be assigned to the Medication Management, Teaching and Assessment-Respiratory (MMTA-Respiratory) clinical group for purposes of case-mix adjustment under the HH PPS. Additionally, U07.1, COVID-19, will be added to a new comorbidity subgroup, Respiratory 10, and will receive the Low Comorbidity adjustment under the HH PPS case-mix system. The clinical group assignment for U07.1, COVID-19, and Vaping-related Disorder, U07.0, and the Low Comorbidity adjustment for COVID-19, U07.1 will be included in the Home Health Patient-Driven Groupings Model (HH PDGM) Grouper software package, v01.1.20, available for download on the HH Grouper Software webpage. It is effective for home health claims with From Dates on or after April 1, 2020.